Sector Report: Fundraising 2009-2010

Many nonprofits — the ones that have stayed committed to smart strategy — are holding steady on income, and some are actually growing. Their secret is to avoid four deadly mistakes of fundraising.

Mistake No. 1: Investing in silver bullets instead of strategy.
Some nonprofits resisted change for so long that they are now making desperate choices in their efforts to catch up. Digital is a key place where this is evident. Nonprofits that were slow to develop inviting and informative Web sites with easy online giving are desperate not to repeat that mistake. So, they're jumping into social media with no clear strategies or performance measurements, betting that if they throw enough at this, they're bound to succeed, right? Wrong. There isn't any silver bullet out there.